About Thirty-five Confession Buddhas

The Thirty-Five Confession Buddhas, found in the Sutra of the Three Heaps, are well-known in Tibetan Buddhism. This Mahāyāna sutra teaches the practice of purification through confession and paying homage to these Buddhas. It is a part of the larger Stack of Jewels Sutra. In Tibet, there were two distinct traditions of the Thirty-Five Confession Buddhas stemming from the Madhyamaka school founded by Nāgārjuna and the Yogācāra school founded by Asaṅga and Vasubandhu. Both schools developed their own rituals for bestowing the Bodhisattva vows, which involved visualizing the Thirty-Five Buddhas and reciting confessions from the Triskhandhadharma Sutra.